The energy sector, especially oil industry, is now preparing to open a whole new plethora of opportunities for consolidation exercises between companies, who would otherwise be each other’s competition, eg: ConocoPhillips and Anadarko. Such a move would mean that from profit to expenditure including major CAPEX, would now be shared between entities looking to explore opportunities together, but the effort to look at new projects and new ground would be unified, stated to benefit both. The lower price of commodities, especially oil, in the international market, is the real reason for this new strategy. At a strategic level, such a move would help companies leverage each other’s strength to position themselves stronger, and provide better returns on the money invested, much of it being public investor cash. In other words, someone like ConocoPhillips could scale up operations and iron out creases in their accounting books. However, this does not undermine the $1.5 billion fund setup for exploration to be better used, and developments like the recent sites found in Senegal expected to fully materialize over 10 years, to be a more frequent occurrence.

Typo (above) : The actual exploration budget for COP is US $13.5B not $1.5B